ANOTHER FEIN FIGAWI – Sue and Leo Fein add a touch of glamour to the 2012 Figawi Charity Ball.

Leo Fein turns the keys over to Adra Cohen

The Cape Cod Mall is no small responsibility. Running what amounts to a small town under a roof out on Route 132 requires the hands-on approach that Manager Leo Fein has taken over the last 26 years.

“You cannot walk through the Cape Cod Mall with Leo Fein without him being recognized five or six times,” said Adra Cohen, the Mall’s former director of marketing and business development who has been tapped to succeed him as he retires Aug. 29. “His ability to connect with people is something I really admire.”

Leo Fein, a lad from Roslindale who attended Northeastern University and played in the Cape Cod Baseball League for Dave Gavitt, ran restaurants on the Cape and elsewhere, became mall manager in April 1988. His tenure included a massive expansion and updating of the mall, among other achievements.

“It’s been quite a thrill,” he said this week, “a nice growing process.”

Fein recalled starting with the Mugar Group and David Mugar as owners and managers of the mall, who were succeeded by New England Development and eventually by current owner Simon Malls.

The mall’s big expansion took four years from concept to construction, according to Fein. “Something like 100,000 people were leaving the Cape to shop in other places because we didn’t have the stores to satisfy them,” he recalled. “That’s where the idea came around: build it and they will come, and they certainly did.”

Fein salutes the town and its people for working with the mall.

“I can tell you the community here in general is a part of what makes this place work,” he said. “We’ve always been close to everybody, from the town manager all the way down all the departments. The fire department is through here on a monthly basis. The police have been fabulous with us. We’ve kept the gang situation out of here, drugs, all because of the relationships we have.”

(Fein revealed that Police Chief Paul MacDonald is also from Roslindale, even “the same parish.”).

The manager doesn’t see a tension between the Main Street, Hyannis and Route 132, Hyannis shopping strands.

“Main Street merchants don’t come to the mall, and mall merchants don’t go to Main Street,” he said of where businesses locate. “Main Street has different ways to do business. They don’t want to do the hours [the mall is open],” and don’t have the number of employees to do that.

That said, Fein has stayed close to Main Street through working with the Hyannis Main Street Business Improvement District and by being a past president of the Hyannis Area Chamber of Commerce. He’s very close to the Penn family of Puritan Clothing and has been a central figure in the Figawi charity events that were a special interest of his dear friend, the late Howard Penn.

Cohen, who grew up in Provincetown and met her husband-to-be in high school there, went to Bentley College and “worked for Simon right after I got out of school.” After 10 years, she returned to the Cape and shortly thereafter was hired by Penn.

“He was a huge mentor to me,” Cohen said, “not just working together at Simon but helping me re-immerse myself in the Cape Cod community. I’m on the board of the Hyannis Area Chamber of Commerce. That’s because Leo wanted to make sure that the mall and the community always remain interconnected.”

There was one community that Fein was happy to see the last of during his years as manager: the raucous gulls that used to nest on the roof.

“They seemed to be attracted to a sandy roof,” he said. “They return to where they were born. Consequently, if they have eight gulls, they all come back.”

Fein called in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the only agency licensed to remove eggs and nests. The gulls, he said, have a three-year lifespan, and the process seems to have worked. Now, he said, “all our neighbors are calling us and asking us what we did.”

He’s also learned something about the creature’s natural cycle. “The gulls are like the tourists,” he said. “They leave us on Labor Day.”

Cohen said she’s been busy “trying to download all the knowledge of the past 26 years in a two-weeks window, but I know Leo will still be close by and make himself available to all of us. Of course, we expect he will still be shopping at the mall.”